Our View: Bet against Cruz in Republican primary at your own risk

Midland Reporter-Telegram

Published 4:22 am, Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Photo: Andrew Harnik

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Prior to his election to the Senate, Cruz's career was centered on practicing law at the highest level. A graduate of Harvard Law School and former clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz led a Houston-based firm's Supreme Court practice, taught such litigation at the University of Texas and was charged with representing the state before the high court as its solicitor general. He also served in the George W. Bush administration, at both the Federal Trade Commission and as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department. less

Prior to his election to the Senate, Cruz's career was centered on practicing law at the highest level. A graduate of Harvard Law School and former clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz led a ... more

Photo: Andrew Harnik

Our View: Bet against Cruz in Republican primary at your own risk

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

So Ted Cruz is running for president.

His speech at Liberty University in Virginia on Monday wasn’t an announcement as much as it served notice to other conservative candidates.

In our view, the junior senator from Texas told it like it was, and if other Republicans were officially going to put their hats in the race they will be in for a fight for the party’s most conservative voters.

We like Cruz and have since he was polling at 1 percent when he announced his run for senator just four years ago. We told our readers of this brash, candid, very articulate former solicitor general who challenged then Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the open Senate seat in 2012. He was armed with endorsements from conservative giants such as then Sen. Jim Demint, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

At the time, most people in Midland were like “Ted who?” That’s not the case any more.

A significant number of Midlanders appreciate a Cruz candidacy. They appreciate that he went to Washington and backed up his strong talk with strong actions. They didn’t want someone to back down to the Washington machine and Obama administration, and Cruz cannot be accused of that. No way.

Those voters will not mind that he’s not even halfway through his first term as a U.S. senator -- something they held against the current president during his candidacy in 2008. The nation is in a full-fledged fiscal and constitutional crisis, they will tell you.

What Cruz’s announcement does politically is send a message to the competition, specifically former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Dr. Ben Carson and former Sen. Rick Santorum, the other candidates likely to fight for the most conservative wing of the Republican Party.

In our view, one of those will be in the real fight when Texas comes around in the primary process. There will be a conservative, a more “establishment” candidate, a current governor and Rand Paul representing the party’s growing libertarian voting bloc. If you like politics at its best, it will be the Super Bowl, March Madness, the Masters and Daytona 500 all wrapped up together with a 2016 bow on top.

Is Cruz the man? We don’t know, and being consistent with Reporter-Telegram policy, we will not endorse now or later. But for those who believe Cruz can’t win the primary because his current poll numbers could be better, we say don’t doubt this man. Few politicians are better in person, better with the grassroots or better in the straw polls, and few on the Republican ticket can come close to match the enthusiasm of a voting bloc that he can.

It doesn’t mean he can win one battleground state, do better with Hispanics or would be the best general election candidate in November 2016. But in primary politics, there are few better than Cruz. Texans know this well.